Your Friday Awesome: OMG Cuteness

It's been another one of those weeks, so I needed this. Yes, please.

#musicmonday: Loretta

I finally watched Coal Miner's Daughter two weeks ago. This has been in my head ever since. Luckily, now whenever I see Sissy Spacek I won't just think of dirty pillows.

Your Friday Awesome: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

I'm not much for far-away sentiment in the wake of a disaster - it seems to make it about you rather than the actual victims and survivors - but today I noticed a trend in my RSS feed: multiple posts about one of my favorite children's books in response to the devastation in Japan.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, touched me more deeply than any other book I read as a child. Creativity and hope in the midst of loss - caused by the reader's own country - is a pretty deep subject for a kid, but that book left a lasting impression on many young readers. In my case, it hit even closer. My grandparents met while working at Los Alamos.

But it seems I'm not the only one who folded paper crane after paper crane out of binder paper throughout elementary school, attempting to make smaller and smaller ones as you created squares out of rectangles. And it seems that you never forget how. I made that tiny one from a small post-it.

So here is to the awesome power of children's books.

#musicmonday: Ode to My Hooptie

This weekend I finally had to say good bye to the car I've driven since I was 16. The old girl wasn't quite as bad as this (she was only missing one hubcap), but when the horn became something akin to a No Whammy button it was characterized by more than one person as "a little hooptie."

I still loved her.

Your Friday Awesome: 100 Dinosaurs and the Awesome Foundation

The Awesome Foundation is really a thing. No seriously. They have chapters all over the world made up of ten people who dedicate themselves to support one project they deem to be "awesome" every month.

Well, (shameless spousal promotion ahead) this month my husband was picked by the San Francisco chapter. They are funding his public art/scavenger hunt project, 100 Dinosaurs. The project is a follow-up to 100 Robots for which he painted 100 unique robots and sold them for ten bucks each, just to see if he could. He did. 100 robots were painted, named and assigned functions - and all were sold before he painted #1.

He wanted to find another project to do and 100 Dinosaurs sounded awesome, but selling 100 of them didn't seem that exciting. Giving them away, however, did. And giving them away to strangers who had to go out and have fun finding them was an even better idea. That is where the Awesome Foundation came in. By giving him a micro grant, he could paint 100 Dinosaurs and give them away for free - really, come on, how awesome is that?

If you would like to try your hand at finding one of the dino paintings, be sure to follow the project's blog or his twitter. Most of the dinos will be hidden around San Francisco and the greater Bay Area but, thanks to some awesome friends, there will be a few hidden around the country and the world.

Here is the happy discoverer of Dino #2. Now doesn't that look like an awesome good time?

#musicmonday: 9 and 10 year olds take on Lil' Wayne

When nine year olds call you out on your misogyny, you done been served.

Your Friday Awesome: Roly Poly Polar Bears

You know what is not awesome? Sciatica. In fact, it totally sucks - especially when you have it so bad the massage therapist reacts, "Awww, you have sciatica as bad as an old, fat, drunk man!"

So there you go. Pregnant ladies and old, fat, drunk men have more in common than previously thought (we're also cranky). So here is a baby polar bear acting a little like he's drunk, and that my friends is awesome.